One year after my blog starts, I’m nominated for the Shauny Award

I was one month out from losing my job with the big daily here in Syracuse.

The post was full of emotions, lots of them. It didn’t have a photo with it, though. I was very much feeling my way around in the your-own-blog dark.

Fast forward to today, my one-year anniversary on WordPress.

The WP content-counters tell me that this will be my 346th post. I started slowly and picked up a lot of momentum. I know that I’ve posted every day since Oct. 27 of last year. That was my fifth anniversary to my dear wife Karen, and I woke up as the sun was ready to peak over the horizon. I snapped a shot from our room overlooking Niagara Falls. I vowed looking over that wonder of the world that I was going to share breathtaking sights and cascading ideas daily.

I hope you like what I’m doing. And by you, I mean the 296 followers who’ve thought enough of one post or another to click a button and allow me into their WordPress Reader.

One of those followers, Irene A. Waters of Australia, thinks enough of my work to nominate me for the Shauny Award. I received that news from her last night, on the eve of this one-year WordPress anniversary. Please click the link above to check our her memoirs and striking photographs.

Serendipity.

Thank you so much Irene.

Here’s the scoop on The Shauny Award. It was started by Dr. Rex, in tribute for Shauny Gibson, a lad who contributed much with his efforts on WordPress.

Show love. Show humanity. Be yourself. Don’t be others. Don’t gossip. Share your award by nominating 10 other bloggers.

Here are a baker’s dozen bloggers that I think fit these exacting standards. Please click their links to discover good work. A diverse group it is, yet they all write about life as they see it, with the ability to make me relate and want to know more. Some are edgy. Some are down-home. Some are funny. Some are dead serious. All have become regular stops on my Reader.

http://prayingforoneday.wordpress.com/ He was a football manager and coach in Edinburgh until horrible fibermyalgia took over and ravaged his body…but he is an inspiration. You might want to join his Share Your Blogs on FB…look on the right side. There is his growing up story I want you to read but can’t find it! Will send when he sends it to me. I think you guys would be great friends. He is kind, gentle and terribly funny in sprite of his constant pain , and being housebound and unable to sleep at night. It is a great honor to get his award! Smiles. . . .

Mark, congratulations on another award. I think I first found your blog by searching for any posts about Anne Tyler and I discovered a world of great writing. Thanks to you I’ve learnt about American football and life in Syracuse and snow. Congratulations on your anniversary!

Thank you for nominating me for this very interesting Shauny Award!
This process of writing my blog was like yours, started more as a catharsis. I was in the pain of bad dating and a little heartache or two. You had lost your job. I felt like it would be sustainable with just the dating online scene. Then, I came up with the byline: “Relationships reveal our hearts.” I started writing love stories from my family and friends. I have written 461 posts, I think it said today! I am approaching the end of a second year! Take care and enjoy the second year! Smiles, Robin

Thank you Mark! I will accept it, if I can go back to my back emails for the others I was awarded but did nothing about because I wasn’t accepting awards. So… if I can find those, and accept those, I will also accept this one. Thank you!!

congratulations, mark. i’m sure you in were flux and a bit of emotional turmoil when you wrote that first post, and wondering how you would rebuild what you did in your life everyday. you most likely had no idea that what you posted on your blog would be so well received and enjoyed by everyone who’s had the opportunity to read it. i love your writing style, probably why you were employed by a paper all those years, and look forward to your posts. as another blogger who writes for a paper said, ‘the difference in blogging is you can connect with your readers.’ there is interaction, a 2-way street. when at a paper you publish and it is pretty much gone. in blog world it is just the beginning of many connections and friendships and learning experiences. thank you so much for the nomination, as always, you are very kind with your words. here’s to many more years, mark and it is our good fortune that you landed here in blogworld. the newspaper’s loss is clearly our gain. ) b

You are so correct, Beth, about blogworld being a connecting experience. It has been a great wonder to me how I could find, through words and pictures alone, people I consider real, true, genuine, positive forces in my life. That’s what friends are for. I appreciate your praise and support on this, my one-year mark. You are a fantastic blogger, Beth, a vibrant voice out of Ann Arbor. Here’s to many more.

I will keep writing, Sandra. After all these decades with words and sentences and paragraphs forming from my ideas, I proudly say that I am a writer. Thank you, and you are welcome for the nomination for your California joy with the little one.

Congratulations Mark. And ditto Anne’s remark. I wouldn’t be back if it hadn’t been for you, and can’t wait for my new chair to arrive so I can get out of the apartment and start destroying the local stores again. I’m sure they all miss me.

I tried to get away with a chair from my surgeon’s office curing my last visit Mark, but he moved faster than I did. Follow up on Monday I’ll hook it up again after he leaves the room. Perfect match for my living room, and I’m needing a smaller chair in there.

I sell collectibles and art online and often find the things I've found have hilarious and at times, dark stories to tell. It's thrilling for me to be creatively random, so always expect the unexpected in the things I share with you.